Tooting for summer news

Christmas and January are glorious news free zones for kiwis.

It’s like turning off a tap on Christmas Eve and like the water restrictions that kick in around then, news driven by politicians is on short rations until February.

tunnel tooting tradition perpetuated

News content over the summer is often a better barometer of how New Zealanders are experiencing life than news during the rest of the year. It’s always interesting analysing what dominates the airwaves and printed pages over this time.

This year it defaulted to the basic stand-by of weather – both local weather and weather across the ditch and in the northern hemisphere. Spiced up with a large dose of climate change discussion and there was an endless source of fodder for the various news outlets that were starving for content.

Other than the weather, news content in December and January was sparse. Everywhere I went people would remark “is that all there is?” after scanning the news websites or listening or looking at appointment broadcasts.

Even Trump inspired news was in short supply. His Government shut-down generated some coverage but he seems to be running out of shock jock tweets – or maybe everyone is so over him they can’t be bothered quoting him anymore.

Here in Wellington the biggest news of the month seemed to come from an ill-fated foray by a city councillor who is calling for a ban on the tooting of horns in the Mount Victoria tunnel.

The response was a fascinating insight into how fundamental attitudes and behaviour manifest themselves in humans.

It is no doubt logical that a local body politician taking a rational approach to health and safety wanted to see the end of horn blowing in the tunnel which assails the ears of the cyclists and pedestrians who share the tunnel territory. But any Wellingtonian worth their salt knows that the friendly exchange of horn blowing in the Mt Vic tunnel is a tradition that has been trained in to generations of citizens since the tunnel opened in 1931.

Predictably, the councillor’s call for an end to tooting in the tunnel brought howls of outrage and a manifold increase in the number of motorists indulging in the behaviour. It was a classic case of the population kicking back against the politics of intrusion.

In politics and social behavioural campaigns the golden rule is be careful what you wish for because the reaction can actually make the problem you are trying to solve worse than if you hadn’t tried at all.

As someone who uses the tunnel reasonably frequently, I had noticed a tail off of the tooting phenomenon in recent years. Now, thanks to Councillor Calvi-Freeman, the tradition has well and truly been revived.

The fact is that if you look at news over this summer, life in New Zealand is as good as it gets in world-wide terms. Sure there are housing problems and inequities in the supply of health care and other issues that need problem solving but all in all what a great summer we have had.

Here’s hoping that the refrain of “Is that all there is in the news?” continues to be be heard throughout February and even further into 2019…..